Maoist and criminal threat turns Bihar village into a ghost hamlet

The houses in Santpur village are in ruins-even the ones built under the Indira Awaas Yojna by the state government.

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Giridhar Jha

November 2, 2009

UPDATED: November 2, 2009 08:59 IST

Prolonged strife between the Maoists and the feudal forces has turned a village in the Naxalite-dominated Gaya district of Bihar into a ghost hamlet.

The houses in Santpur village are in ruins-even the ones built under the Indira Awaas Yojna by the state government.

There are no shops and no electricity in the village.

The only proof of someone living here is the dim light coming from a thatched house belonging to a carpenter Rambali Mistri.

Mistri has no neighbours. They left the village almost a decade ago for fear of gun-toting marauders. Some of them return to the village but only for work.

"We come here to till our fields but make it a point to return before darkness falls," said Mohammed Islam, who is now settled in neighbouring Shivrattipur village.

Given a choice, Mistri's family would also have left the village but poverty forced them to stay put. "We had no means to shift to a new place," said Damyanti Devi, Mistri's wife.

But the Mistris have not been spared either. On Diwali, a dozen armed men broke into their house. "They took away all our belongings and also assaulted my husband and sons. We are left with nothing now. The police had come to inquire but nothing happened." Damyanti said the exodus began around a decade ago after a Dalit woman, Suggi Devi, was found murdered in the fields, just a few yards from her house.

The murder created panic in the village which had witnessed raids by armed men. The villagers said the raiders looted houses, molested women and assaulted those who protested. It all happened during the battle for supremacy between the private armies of the landlords and the Maoists in south-central Bihar.

Nobody knows for sure whether the Naxalites or highway robbers were responsible for the attacks.

As the suspected Naxalite involvement made the police wary, the robbers had a field day in Santpur. The police neither deployed any force, nor set up an outpost here. The government officials came here from time to time but nothing was done.

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